


Burn your bed of roses

by bearsquares



Series: Flesh on Metal [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Back Alley Blow Jobs, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Injury, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, POV Alternating, Pegging, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Rivals to Lovers, S/M, Semi-Public Sex, dirty love letters, slow updates ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26733844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearsquares/pseuds/bearsquares
Summary: She envied his face. He looked like a demon; no humanity or mercy expected. When she had made her first kill—trembling inside yet outwardly unmoved—those around her, ally and foe alike, seemed horrified, almost betrayed. They named her “Ashen Demon” so none would assume she was truly human—a deceiver without emotions or memories, not even a heartbeat. But the Death Knight had all of those things. Everything that had eluded her since birth, encased in steel. If she were to tear his monstrous face away, might she see his humanity? Or even take it for herself?War makes strange bedfellows.(Plot adjacent to the “original release” Crimson Flower route. Death Knight/Byleth ⇉ Byleth/Jeritza.)
Relationships: Jeritza von Hrym/My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth/The Death Knight
Series: Flesh on Metal [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945747
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64





	1. binding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _How many times do you want to die?  
>  How many ways do you want to die?_
> 
> Silversun Pickups, "The Royal We"

_ The heels of her boots tap against cracked pavestones; her sword wags behind her, heavy with blood; a mass of dark orange clouds rushes in to smother the pale sky. _

_ The dream always begins this way. _

_ Her body and mind are split; one moves forward, the other lingers where she started, where the colors are different, brighter, and the air is clear yet full of nervous vibrations. Garreg Mach’s enormous stone gate looms overhead, every warm, nervous body in place, and she is thinking of changing their orders at the last second, rearranging them to take different routes, form different groups.  _

_ There is a second chance somewhere, deep in her tangled memories, but she never finds it in time. As she remembers their trusting young faces, she prepares to fail them again. _

_ She reaches the eastern stronghold, panting her raw and ragged breaths, alive. Her blade glistens with fresh, pungent blood. She smells of it, gags on its richness. By some act of mercy, the events between the gate and the road have smeared together so she never knows whose blood it is. Knights, monks, students—some fighting to protect their beliefs, all fighting to protect their home. Faith can be restored, however, and homes rebuilt. Loved ones are irreplaceable. Byleth fights for her students on these grounds, destroys their enemies without hesitation. Her loyalty to them is absolute. _

_ Flayn loses her footing and falls backward, reaching out her little hands as if Byleth might catch her. Her body hits the ground hard, sprawled out and struggling like an insect. _

_ Byleth always holds her at bladepoint, wondering if she is as cruel as the girl says. _

_ Her hands tremble. _

_ She adjusts her grip, flips the Sword of the Creator point down, then thrusts.  _

_ Bright, glassy eyes widen, overflowing with tears.  _

_ Leaning on the hilt of her sword, Byleth hunches over to get a better look into Flayn’s mirror-like eyes because for once they are devoid of secrets. Her featureless mask of a face is reflected there, and her weapon flaring its unnatural heat, hungering. As she moves, her sacred relic sinks deeper into the earth—so close to little Flayn’s neck, a hair’s width from her delicate shoulder.  _

_ Byleth whispers above the groans of burning timber and dying soldiers. _

Run.

_ The stronghold is ablaze, heaving smoke and embers skyward. Soon the air will grow too thick to breathe; soon the fire will eat her alive. _

_ She still clings to her sword grip, leaning against a gust of heat. The sudden burst of sobs that follow belongs to her, she knows, but she cannot see her own face. Her head throbs with hiccups and whimpers in place of a frantic heartbeat, muffling the clatter of armor and approaching hoofbeats. _

_ And here, these covered sounds mark the turning point of the dream, where misery turns to a horrifying brilliance. She hopes for it yet cannot explain to herself why though she asks every time they meet.  _

_ The firelight flings his tall, pronged shadow across the flagstones to rest at her feet. _

_ His timing is hideous. It always was. _

_ Byleth rights herself, draws her weapon from the dirt with a firm tug; clutches a steel sword close left, motions her students back; sprints across tiles; vaults over flames. But there is no cavernous taunt to beckon her, no scythe to meet her sword. Only the thump of his mount’s paws and the splintering purr of hellfire fill the silence between them. _

_ He sees it—doom coiling around her body, demanding sacrifice—but says nothing. _

_ There will be no duel tonight. There never will be. Both know this as well as they have come to know each other. So they offer their hands instead of their blades and together form something horrendous. _

_ The hide of it contorts and bristles with adrenaline; it bursts through bodies and defenses, almost intangible in its speed; two fangs strike out in eager pursuit of live, wet heat. The beast goes to meet damnation, bearing every name of those who deserve it: Heretic. Apostate. Demon. In its merciless violence is a nothingness which swallows all that limits its desires. It is beyond nature, a shifting, brutal form shrouded in a dull red mist, leaving nothing behind but stains and torn appendages, consuming with abandon so it does not devour itself, for it must be judged. _

_ When it shudders and dies, it is still furious and lusting. As it is ripped in half, the roar of battle and screams of divine wrath cease. Still, it wants. _

_ The unholy beast’s skin melts away. Straps of muscle and cords of sinew wither, unraveling until her quivering body is left. Again, the dark embraces her.  _

_ Life burns in her veins; her limbs twitch; she sleeps. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote most of these one-shots last September but I took a sacred vow not to post anything until I was both done and happy with it...you know, just to try it. Anyway, it got shelved for almost a year and here we are back in Octembruary with some do-it-with-the-spurs-on throwback porn. ʅฺʕ •᷄ᴥ•᷅ʔʃฺ
> 
> For reference icymi: before the DLC kicked in, Jeritza was written out of CF and they just had the Death Knight "on the western front" doing a great job. So I kept that. Most obvious difference here. I also wrote the Death Knight based on how he behaves in the main game/battles more so than Jeritza’s supports but, you know, that’s Fire Emblem! They’re bound to be different, anyway. (Also maskless Jeritza is a way, way bigger deal here because your friend Bear expected to work for it. I KNEW BETTER, too, but oooh they got me good.)
> 
> Last thing: The Crest of Lamine is named after a summoning talisman. Byleth is named after a goetic love demon. It’s not subtle and also metal as fuck.


	2. rite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made some revisions. It seemed like a good idea for consistency's sake since I'm finishing up the last two chapters and this was the first one I started. ʕ ಥᴥಥʔ

The Black Eagle Strike Force took Arianrhod with an efficient and brutal swiftness. Once inside, the skirmish ended within a few hours; Cornelia fell headless at Edelgard’s feet, and those who did not surrender joined their countrymen in a heap to be burned, buried, or collected. Laying siege on a walled city was reckless—no wiser than launching an assault in a narrow corridor or warring on burning soil—but none questioned their miraculous victory, nor the ones before it. The war had stagnated for years, exhausted morale and resources on all sides, but now it seemed they could end it in a few moons. For that reason, they didn’t question their tactician, either.

Byleth knew that she worried them. Anyone would, glimpsing her staggering away from a battle as though she had fought an entire campaign. But despite her alarming appearance at times, she felt no need, nor did she want to explain her divine power. Their odds had been near impossible from the start and, whether or not her allies understood it, she would continue breaking and mending time as long as her strength allowed.

She wiped her damp cheek against her shoulder and scrubbed harder at the blood lacquered onto her blade. Her temples throbbed, eyes straining to see any color but red. The sky seemed to explode with it; pure, blinding red; cloudless, save a massive plume of smoke rolling eastward. The fallen city would burn for hours yet, carrying the stench of charred flesh and timber for miles. In time, it would reach the forests, drawing wolves and hawks to the gates of the fortress. But she wouldn't be around to deal with the beasts; they would be halfway to Garreg Mach by then, planning their true invasion of Faerghus.

A sudden burst of voices drew her attention to the southern gate. The drawbridge opened with a groan; each grinding clank of its chains echoed through the ramparts as it lowered. Their replacements, she assumed.

Her stomach turned. Arianrhod was almost unrecognizable for its crumbling masonry and gutted houses, its streets littered with the remains of soldiers and Cornelia’s behemoth dolls. But the orders she gave that day were enough to secure victory and keep her former students alive—that purpose drove her forward, always, even to the brink of total collapse—yet she knew she could have done more. There was always more to give, if she had the strength to do it.

A rider dismounted at the gate, dark as pitch against the white fortress walls.

Of course—he had been leading the western armies for the past five years. Records and plenty of off-hand mentions at the war table had told her early on that he survived the Battle of Garreg Mach, but seeing him alive brought with it a strange sense of relief. Like her, he appeared unchanged by time and conflict, bearing the same skeletal visage and black armor she still recognized as an enemy despite meeting him as an ally countless times in her sleep.

Byleth put her sword aside, watching him consult with several jittery-looking officers. Unmounted, his posture reminded her of the soft-spoken combat instructor, Jeritza: confident and poised, yet stiff and somewhat awkward without a weapon in hand. Perhaps the Death Knight hadn’t swallowed him up completely.

He suddenly looked up, over the heads of the officers, and took an abrupt turn in Byleth’s direction. The surrounding men flinched away or yelped, but he ignored them. The Death Knight’s attention was hers, a mile from her seat atop the parapet. He regarded her with unwavering intensity, which she naturally returned having never looked at him any other way. Only now she felt her pulse quicken, an eager clutch in her chest, as if her heart was desperate to beat—to throb. Years ago, this reaction might have confused her, and though she could hardly explain it now, she knew it was yearning. Nightmares or memories, the emotions were always the same. The desire to meet again was real. It always had been.

She raised a hand in greeting. When he didn’t react, she glanced down at the space next to her, then back to him.

The sideways tilt of his horned head was reply enough. 

  
  
  


‡

  
  
  


They sat together awhile, silent. 

Byleth leaned back on her hands, letting her legs dangle over the ledge of the parapet. The Death Knight was still as the stones beneath them, shadows climbing the curves and angles of his armor while the sun set at a crawl.

Her memories of him were full of noise—war cries and clashing metal—but now everything, even the idle thumping of her bootheels against the silver-white wall, seemed miles away. The din of fires and footfalls from the city reached them in faint echoes while night insects droned weakly in the trampled scrub surrounding the fortress. Even her constant mechanical click of thoughts seemed dampened by the fathomless quiet.

The Death Knight usually had plenty to say to her, but, as with their last meeting, something was holding his tongue. The longer they were together, the more pathetic she felt beckoning him here, hoping that he would greet her as he used to, that he would hold her at the end of his scythe and demand they finish the duel they began in Holy Mausoleum. It was just another grasp at nostalgia, naïve like her wasted attempts at convincing her former colleagues and students to surrender. She recalled that day’s battle—running an old academy student clean through, snaring another with the Sword of the Creator and ripping her from her mount. The outcome never changed. If she hadn’t hunted the two down, or the others before them, she might have prevented a score of needless deaths. If she hadn’t been so foolish, perhaps Arianrhod wouldn’t have become an earthless graveyard.

“I should apologize—”

“Don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

The rest of the sentence fizzled on her tongue. He knew she hadn’t asked him here to talk business—sharp as always. There were things she wanted to ask him, maybe confess to him, in hopes of understanding what had caused this change in her. Why had she rushed to meet him in battle even after he showed no interest in harming her students? Why had it been so easy to drop her guard and trust him? Fight at his side without hesitating? Why had she sought comfort in one so inclined to kill her, who had urged her to kill him? 

But these questions stuck like barbs in her throat, likely for the better.

Perhaps with more rest she could have put words to the vague sadness of finding his old haunts empty, of remembering rushing past him, sometimes without an acknowledgement, focused on everything but the person she wanted to know yet never could.

“We never did get to spar, did we?”

“I thought you didn't want to,” he said, more wary than insolent.

Byleth considered it for a moment, slipping into memories of new places and fascinating strangers. “You gave me a weird look whenever I asked.”

“Hmm.” His plated gloves clinked at his sides, gripping and releasing nothing. “I…don't know.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.” 

He grumbled at that.

Common sense told her to shut her mouth and let their conversation end on a civil note. Her father had often warned against chasing her curiosity, but the quandary of Jeritza and the Death Knight, for her, went far deeper than kidnapping and masks. “Have you always wanted to kill me?”

It was impossible to tell if he was stunned or deep in thought, and his silence seemed to drag for ages. “I will not speak for him, but  _ I _ have. Yes…”

It almost sounded like a compliment. Maybe she wasn’t well enough to have this conversation.

“You could have five years ago,” she said. “I doubt I could have fought you off. I certainly can’t now.”

“Killing weaklings brings me no pleasure.” 

She laughed to herself, whispered, “I guess not.”

He glanced in her direction, then away as quick. “You look dead already.” 

“That’s not very nice.”

“It’s intoxicating.” 

Byleth’s eyes widened, color rising in her cheeks. He had never used that word before—not to describe her appearance, anyway. "Thank you?" 

A distorted sigh hissed out of him. She peeked sideways at him through her tangled bangs; the Death Knight kept his eyes ahead, but the strange current between them shifted out of murky tension and into a dangerous clarity. He was becoming frustrated with her, and she was aroused by it.

She followed the strong curves of his thighs, from his battle-worn cuisses to the crotch of his pants. She imagined him wanting her in other ways—his cock visible under the heavy, black fabric of his trousers, hard between his thigh and her belly, filling her hands, her mouth, her cunt—

A hot pulse shot between her legs; she crossed them tight. “Do you…still think about killing me?”

“I am not allowed.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Why, then? Do you want to die?”

“Answer me.”

He replied with a rumbling chuckle, amused by her change in tone. “Yes. I often dream of the slow, exquisite end I wish to give you; the splendid heat and fragrance of your blood, your body writhing in agony—” 

The intent in his low voice chilled her, skimmed up her spine like the tip of a blade. Any moment he might flay her open—

“Every squirm, every weakening breath, every shudder—it will not matter whom I kill thereafter, or how many; I will only hear you crying out in the throes of death as I wring the life from another.”

“What if I take you first?”

“Ah…” He tipped his helm back a little; there was a smile in his voice. “Death by your blade would be devastating. When I think of it, sometimes I…” He trailed off with a faint growl.

His open-faced pleas for death used to bother her, even annoy her; she had no desire to kill him or abandon her students by dying in a masturbatory duel. But Jeralt had been alive then; Sothis still dozed away on her little throne, stoppering Byleth’s deepest and ugliest emotions. Now that she had experienced the depths of misery and the highs of rage, his addiction to both wasn’t so perplexing.

“I think I understand you better now.” She lifted her gaze to find him half-turned, watching her. “Was it odd of me to try?”

“You wish so terribly to die by my hand?”

Perhaps she answered him out of despair. Despair had opened her to him that night five years ago, and he coaxed from her the most terrible, wonderful things. “If you must die by mine, it’s only fair.”

“Why now?” His voice rasped as if he had been holding his breath in the deepest recesses of his armor. A man was there inside, yet she pictured withered lungs flaring to life, a long-dead heart bursting at the thought of tearing her apart.

Had her chest drawn tight for the same reason?

The grounds below—the lazing mote, the grass embankments, immersed in the deep blue shade of the mountains—blurred. Vertigo tilted her vision, lifted her stomach. Why now?, indeed. If she fell here, she would plummet to her death. 

When the Death Knight yanked her onto his lap, she felt a single, heavy thump in her chest.

The tassets at his sides creaked like the boughs of a dying tree, but he was very much alive, almost crackling with tension. Yet when he took her by the wrist, he did so gently. Where was the violence? The pain? Perhaps he had never thought beyond this point—the initial touch, the heat of senses at full swell—she certainly hadn’t. Whatever uncertainty was lurking beneath his silence bled into her the moment her small hand met the bulge in his trousers. He was big enough to give her pain, and hard enough to kill it. 

She breathed a small noise of affection, fondling the shape of his cock; he made a small, inscrutable noise of his own and seized her wrist to press himself harder against her. It would be fun to get him off like this, she decided. Under a table, half-hidden in an alcove, maybe an alleyway—great fun.

Her fingers itched with numbness from battle, clumsy while she undid his fly. She took him with both hands—the tip was glossy and red, already slick—and gave him a full, gentle stroke. What little was visible of his skin went taut over his muscles while she traced the pale curve of his shaft, slipped her hand through the tight canopy of his trousers. There was a warning in his responding growl, as if to say he could wrench her legs apart and brutalize her right there if he wanted to. Instead he let her handle him as she liked, holding her steady, his head bowed in reluctant obedience. He seemed fixated on her touch, blistering eyes watching her toy with him as she would any man. Unlike any man, he made no demands or pleading requests, didn't rush her; he seemed content to be touched by her at all. More than content. 

He groaned; weary, almost delicate. She took her hand away—partly surprised, mostly hoping to provoke him. One so obsessed with pleasure, with taking it from her, and she had given it to him. But she could give him much more than this. Then what sounds would he make?

“Why.”

“I want to do it with you.”

“With me…” he said haltingly, like her words were foreign. “Are you certain?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

The Death Knight seemed to consider it, then gave a soft, resigned sort of laugh. He steadied her with a clawed hand to the small of her back while she repositioned herself. His thick cock nudged against her shorts, insistent, but she didn’t look away from him, pinned by his unblinking stare while he spoke in his usual forceful tone. “I will take of you what I please again and again until one of us is dead.”

In her mercenary days, men and women would approach her in busy taverns and toss out a proposition as soon as they asked her name. They wanted something temporary: to satisfy a natural urge and move on to the next job, the next town, the next willing partner. But the Death Knight had no interest in experience and a few moments of release; he wanted an ending. A glorious ending only the two of them could give each other. Byleth smiled. She’d never had one of those.

“Still?”

“Still.”

He trailed a pointed fingertip down from her navel, traced the seam of her shorts. “Very well.” 

She felt a pressure between her legs, heard the faint popping of stitches. A moment of panic. He wouldn't. He might.

In one swift gesture, he tore a great slit in her shorts. A yelp slipped out of her—she was exposed, yet somehow unharmed, shorts and tights split clean up the middle. She looked from herself—pitifully wet—to him, her body suffused with heat. It had been easy to feign coolness with strangers; there were no unresolved duels, no unexpected consequences, no rampaging emotions.

She touched his rounded metal cheekbone, traced the edges of his mask, his collar, his breastplate. There she found a hold. His glovetips needled at her skin as he took handfuls of her ass, drawing her closer, aligning them. The feeling of his cock pushing and dragging against her was like the faint scrape of a blade, hesitating before the thrust and fatal twist. She reached between them, took him in hand, guided him in.

The sob he pushed out of her seemed to startle him, but when he tried to lift her away, she clung harder to his collar and sat down on him again. Their last quivering line of restraint snapped.

The day’s battle had left her weak and disoriented, lapsing in and out of sense as she took every punishing inch of him. To be arranged and held and fucked in the crushing grip of one she called rival was outright degrading; it filled her with a shame so luscious and honey-thick she couldn’t speak or hear anything but the steady thud of her ass against his lap. He moved her so easily, as if she weighed nothing to him—no power, no substance. Byleth looked up at him, certain she would find disgust, but death's mask never wavered. Fire bore into her hazy stare as he slung an arm around her shoulders, half-cradling her. Would he touch her this way if he found her repulsive? He cocked his hips, drove himself in deeper; she burst into adoring cries, meeting every thrust, desperation outweighing the immense pressure of him. So close. If only she could see his face. Somewhere behind the bared fangs and pitiless lust, he was pink-cheeked and biting his lip quiet, his grey-blue eyes glassy while his head swam with spiking pleasure. She wanted to see him as ruined as she was. His pretty eyes brimming with tears, like hers. 

His searing gaze blurred, disappeared, and vertigo and ecstasy came together in a dreamy burst.

  
  
  


‡

  
  
  


Byleth came awake with a listless moan. Every muscle seemed slack and tense at once, baffled by exhaustion and pain, and her mind was no clearer. There was an arm supporting her at the waist, another across her back, like two bars of an enormous cage. She pictured herself breaking on the steel of his breastplate like a feeble wave, and somehow he had gathered her and saved her from trickling out of his lap. 

She rolled her head against his chest, uncrushing the other half of her face, and took a hazy look over the pauldron blocking her view. How long they had been this way, she wasn’t sure—seconds? Minutes? The last light of sunset glowed violet along the dark mountain ridges while a scattering of stars glinted through Arianrhod’s veil of smoke. They hadn’t been together long, but it seemed night had taken care to slip in unnoticed.

She righted herself. A twinge of pain shot from her shoulders to the base of her skull; from there it seemed to spread to every part of her, worst in her hips and abdomen. They were still connected, and he was still hard, but didn’t seem terribly concerned by it.

“You didn’t come.”

“You passed out.”

“Sorry…”

He made a low, pensive sound, like a curious growl of hunger. Worn leather rasped against her chin, softer pads pressing into her cheeks. Left and right he turned her head. Only his burning eyes were visible in the dark, studying her twisted up in his lap.

To think so many had gaped up at him this way, memorizing his features as they were eviscerated or dismembered. She envied his face. He looked like a demon; no humanity or mercy expected. When she had made her first kill—trembling inside yet outwardly unmoved—those around her, ally and foe alike, seemed horrified, almost betrayed. They named her “Ashen Demon” so none would assume she was truly human—a deceiver without emotions or memories, not even a heartbeat. But the Death Knight had all of those things. Everything that had eluded her since birth, encased in steel. If she were to tear his monstrous face away, might she see his humanity? Or even take it for herself?

“Your face…befits death.” He stroked her jaw with the points of his glove. “I wish to see it again.”

She mustered enough of her wits to reply, “next time we ruin a city…maybe then.”

“You deny me?”

“I must.”

“Regrettable.”

Regrettable, indeed. Their meeting at all was likely a fluke. Had it not been for her moment of weakness, they probably would have shared little more than a glance before resuming their duties. Her heart ached at the thought. Lately she believed it had learned to ache instead of beat, as if that was a fair substitute.

“I should go,” he said, softer.

“Right. Of course.”

Byleth took hold of his spiked collar and pulled herself up to her knees. When he slid out of her, she gasped, and her limbs turned languid at the sudden emptiness. The Death Knight’s grip on her tightened, holding her still, almost nose-to-nose with him. There were no glinting weapons between them now, no aggression or forbidding words, only a thin sheet of metal. She leaned in, peering into the eye sockets of his mask; there was no sign of a human behind the red glow of his pupils, only plunging darkness. Some arcane magic, she assumed. 

He gave a restless squirm beneath her, which she found oddly cute. Rather than drawing away, she pressed her lips to the fanged grin of his mask. It was smooth and warm even though it looked everything but. She only dared linger for a second, surprised it hadn’t unnerved her at all. (Judging by his stifled, warbly grunt, he sounded plenty unnerved for the both of them.)

They separated and turned away from each other, the spell of impulse broken. 

She settled into a tight sitting position while he turned away to adjust himself. For now, it was best to ignore the awkward logistics of making herself presentable enough to stand before her allies, let alone walk. It both humiliated and pleased her that she would be sore for days, remembering what they did whenever she bent just the right way.

“I still want to apologize,” she said once he seemed finished. “I was responsible for the siege plan, and there were…oversights.”

“It still doesn’t matter.”

“But it’s your problem now, isn’t it?”

He paused, then muttered, “not for long.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t reply.

Byleth itched to press him further, but he seemed bound to silence. His silhouette, blurry against Arianrhod’s dying light, appeared hunched and solemn. Even if he wanted to tell her, it would remain locked in his spiny shell with the rest of his secrets.

“We’ll be leaving for the monastery soon. Before dawn.”

He straightened his posture, relaxing his shoulders a bit. “Hm.”

“I suppose I won’t see you again before this is over.”

He faced her. His hollow eyes, rimmed by the darker shadows of night, seemed to droop. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well…” A blush warmed her cheeks. “Shall I write to you?”

“No.”

“No?” she chuckled with a skeptical lift of her eyebrows. “Why not?”

“There is no need.”

“Throw my letters away if you like. I’ll still write them.”

“Ugh.”

A gentle breeze, clean of smoldering decay, lifted her hair. She swiped a few flyaway strands behind her ear. “Survive until then, okay?”

The Death Knight regarded her a moment, calculating, then left with a flat, “I have yet to kill you.”

As his dark figure disappeared down the rampart stairs, the strange feeling of phantom separation which had followed her through the long sleep returned, tugging and flailing like a child’s tantrum. Her ribs seemed to tighten, as if to hold it in; she rubbed at the hard plane of her sternum. Ill, short of breath. This was something deeper, more primal than the latent emotions and personality tells Sothis had collected from her; even her brief intuitive link with the Death Knight hadn’t broken with such bitterness.

To connect with one who lived for his raw desires, to feel them herself, satisfied her in unrealized ways and places—but that niche had been emptied as soon as it was filled. Now she would give anything to know that visceral pleasure again; rip it from him if need be. Now she was alone, wanting everything that he was, inside and out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week: The Death Knight endures...barely.


	3. obedience

“Reports, General.”

A meek, young courier stood before him, lost in a burden of papers—a local waif by the look of his scrawny frame. It was unfortunate that they made such effective scouts and runners, but he supposed delivering messages was preferable to having one’s bottom kicked by a cruel master. Children were cursed with resilience. He pitied them.

And yet he couldn’t help hating the boy a little for presenting him with such a heap of nonsense. The “reports” were matters he had already discussed with the emperor restated in Hubert’s ghastly handwriting; every word slanted forward with pointless emphasis, the letters spindly and starved of meaning—that man would be dying on the battlefield still penning his wretched notes! It came with the job, but damn the tedium of it all.

“Thank you.”

“Also—” The courier hesitated. He glanced about, probably hoping for someone to come rescue him from their conversation. Had it taken him this long to find error in approaching the Death Knight alone in a darkened corridor?

“Also?”

The boy took a wheezy breath and produced a letter: innocuous, neatly folded, identical to every other one stacked beneath it. He added it to the Death Knight's sheaf of reports, unaware that he was all but dangling meat before a starving animal. “I was told to give this to you, er…specially.”

The Death Knight snatched the letter up. He wanted her to kill him, but not like this. 

Stubborn as he was, he had failed to convince himself that Byleth never meant to write to him. Whenever he recalled the uncertain purity in her voice, how it pierced him with dread when he looked upon her sweet, blood-smeared face, his resolve fell to ruin. If he had simply controlled himself that night, he might have spent his life in merciful ignorance, struggling to accept he felt anything for her at all. But he knew now. All too well.

He should have stayed put at Arianrhod and been obliterated with the other luckless pawns in the Empire’s war. 

He popped the seal on the letter and rushed to unfold the pages, craving her words no matter how sappy or lascivious—and it seemed she intended to satisfy him to the best of her ability,  _ damn her. _ Dense, clean handwriting filled the parchment from top to bottom, front and back. (He hadn’t expected one so sparing of words to ramble, but Byleth was full of exhausting surprises.) The thought of reading from the beginning was too much to bear, so he chose a random line toward the center of the page.

  
  


_ It is almost painful to admit, but I took pleasure in the horrible things we did together. I still do. If that night had ended differently, I wonder if we would have done what we did at Arianrhod. I wouldn’t have said no… I think by then my feelings for you had already changed. _

  
  


He swallowed hard and skipped ahead.

  
  


_ I was always wet when I fought you, could you tell? The scratches and bruises you gave left me trembling for days, touching myself in secret, picturing the unspeakable things you might do to me. _

  
  


Oh no.

  
  


_ I keep thinking about fucking you in public. We were close to it before _ — _ what if we had been caught? The threat of disgrace and punishment excites me in the strangest way. I cannot explain it to you here, but I would love to get on my knees and show you. _

_ Until we meet again. _

_ Byleth _

  
  


“General?”

Despite the frantic pivot of his gaze, his voice stayed firm. “Yes?” 

“Sorry, I—you have my—”

In his haste, he had taken the courier’s entire stack of correspondence. The Death Knight thrust the rest of the pile at him. “Apologies.”

The courier fumbled with the papers as he took them. “No trouble, sir, no trouble! Good day to you.” He hurried away, body stiff with control until he reached the end of the corridor. It was almost funny the way he hurled himself around the corner at the last second, but the Death Knight didn't feel like laughing.

He peeked down at the letter again. Restless nights tormented by his unrelenting want for her weren’t new, but their recent encounter made them all the more vivid: her glowing eyes locked on his, the edge of pain in her gratified moans, her throat bared to him as she threw her head back in rapture. Lately, he came almost as soon as he put his hands on himself, but instead of languishing in vulgar thoughts of a dead woman, he stewed in guilt and uncertainty, asking himself if Arianrhod was consolation for what she could never give him. Their simple rivalry, for him, ended the moment she vanished—gone from his side in one roaring wingbeat. Whatever she was to him, be it his quarry or his interest, he didn’t appreciate her being taken from him. He spent the years thereafter in a state of mourning, considering the possibility that she was fated to leave him behind, that her life had and always would be beyond his reach. That he was a fool. That hurt him more than he’d ever admit.

But now, learning that her feelings had also changed loosened something old and well-rooted in his heart. It made him ill, with the horror one might feel at the first sight of their own blood. There had been solitude in his lonesomeness, control over his untended emotions—and he was losing that control. No, he already had.

The Death Knight heaved a sigh and glared down at the papers in his hand. He would finish reading them in private.

  
  


‡

  
  


Letters volleyed between them in the weeks that followed; her flourishing propositions for his terse yet heartfelt approvals.

Growing up, he assumed he would face a lifetime of grief and maladjustment from a horrific childhood, not the mild embarrassment of receiving love letters. (Though he wouldn’t call them “love letters” as they were far too explicit.) He honestly despised the very idea of it, but he couldn’t throw them away, nor could he leave them unanswered. To have the one person he would give anything to kill writing him rugged poetry was its own delightful taboo.

  
  


_ Might I find pleasure in killing you or die myself to please you? _

  
  


But the true beauty of it all lay in her eagerness to provoke him. At times, he wanted to make her sorry for encouraging his perversity—for basking in it—but he enjoyed the attention. Deep at his core, he was dying for it. And not for much longer, it seemed. 

Recently, the Emperor had summoned him north to a hamlet of Fhirdiad. She received him in a tavern, of all places, and spoke with her usual unflinching authority over a weathered, ale-stained wooden table. (He found this deliciously funny, but kept it to himself.) After a costly victory at the Tailtean Plains, she had decided to reassign him to her personal vanguard for their final assault on the Kingdom capital. This surprised him at first, as she had so far been careful to keep her uncle under the impression that the Death Knight was a shared asset, but he accepted his orders without hesitation—graciously, even, which she called “unprecedented”. Perhaps it was strange of him, but he had grown bored with puttering around uncontested borders and mountains of paperwork. Only a bloodbath would put him right. And a bloodbath he would have; prey was always most vicious when cornered.

But now he couldn’t have cared less about laying waste to Seiros’s flock of zealots because after a tiresome evening at the war table, Byleth had backed  _ him _ into a corner. And he wasn’t feeling terribly vicious about it.

She removed her cloak and folded it several times before placing the bundle at his feet.

“What are you—” 

She dropped to her knees. After weeks of winding each other up, he supposed there was no room left for pretense.

The Death Knight rested a clawed hand atop her head; he brushed her hair away from her eyes with unthinking tenderness. Or perhaps he was Jeritza in that moment. It was becoming more difficult to tell. 

When they fought as enemies, his sense of self was quite clear. Her life belonged to the Death Knight—she was his, his alone, and Jeritza had no say in the matter because he was weak. If the opportunity to kill her arose, he would inevitably hesitate because he was nothing more than a poorly-conceived imitation of Emile. Oh, he could just see the coward standing over their conquered rival, his blade quivering above her breast.  _ Do it, _ he would snap at him,  _ do it! Take your pleasure! _ And he  _ wouldn’t. _ The Death Knight knew what they both wanted, and he wasn’t afraid to indulge the desires that plagued them both; he had more than enough strength to do so. But his dominance had begun to slip. He would be a complete fool to deny it.

Byleth tugged at his fly with her teeth, gazing up at him with a mixture of smugness and affection. He looked away. What an evil look she had, kneeling before him without a shred of humility. Many thought her humble, even benevolent, but she was in truth a braggart with a rude sense of humor, which didn’t surprise him at all knowing what he did of her upbringing. The only mercenary quality she seemed to lack was a drinking problem.

She drew him out with a touch so gentle he shivered. “Do you know how badly I’ve wanted you in my mouth?” 

“Go on.”

At first, she did nothing but watch him firming between her hands, her lips together in a faint smile. She baffled him. Why feign complete submission on his cock and then delight in teasing him so? What did she have to gain from turning him rabid this way? Did she want to make him angry? The more he thought of it, the greater his urge grew to stand her up and rip her shorts off.

The Death Knight gave a growling sigh while her small hands meandered along his length, back and forth, obliging yet maddening. Those hands clasped his own just moments ago—she took his hands in hers and led him to this private place with such childish glee one would think they were about to play a game. If this was her idea of a game, at this ungodly hour, he really would haul her to the toes of her boots and fuck her silly. 

He flexed his grip on her skull. “Enough with your taunting.”

A look of amusement flitted across her face, but she brought him at last to her glistening mouth. He throbbed on her tongue, groaned low in his chest when she licked around the head and tested his flesh between her teeth. He hated this fickle petting—foreplay, was it? Coward’s tactic. But before he could reprimand her teasing again, he was prodding the back of her throat, buried in the most incredible, slick heat. Different from before. The points of her teeth, maybe. Her clever tongue.

His free hand slapped against the wall behind her, clawing and scoring the plaster. This alone would finish him if he wasn't careful. Waiting so long, memorizing her filthy letters, mutilating unworthy enemies to curb his frustration, left him so pent up he was already falling apart.

In grabbing a handful of her hair, the sharp tips of his glove raked her scalp. He felt compelled to apologize, but she’d stolen the air from his lungs. Fitting him in her mouth to begin with caused her pain—her face gave that away—but pain, he’d learned, only seemed to encourage her. Each pass of her lips met the ring of her fist, handling what she couldn’t take of him. He lost track of her other hand, pleasantly unaware until she squeezed his rear. He startled, thrust hard against her palate. She whined, and this time he stuttered an apology. It only earned him more hideous groping. Jarring as it was, he should have expected it. In her last letter, she wrote:

  
  


_ One day I will bend you over and take you as you have taken me. _

  
  


How or why or what it would feel like hadn’t occurred to him because the sentiment alone drove him wild. In the past, she rarely responded to his provocations. To have her challenge him for once was earthshaking, even scrawled over parchment—and in a sloppier hand than usual. She had been touching herself while she wrote it, and he had fondled himself while he read it. That detail pleased him still. 

She suddenly released him.

Her fingertips had been teasing dangerously near a place he never expected her to touch, and her wicked tongue doing unspeakable things to his prick had him moments from finishing inside of her for the second time in his damnable life. Jeritza stifled a childish shout of frustration. The Death Knight, meanwhile, had reached the very end of his patience.

“You stopped,” he said in a deadened voice. His cock dipped in the open air, missing the heat of her mouth. 

Byleth took his pants at the waistband and tugged them down to the tops of his thighs. He tilted his helm further downward, about to demand she get back to what she was doing before, then noticed what had her so distracted. 

A jagged scar. It stood out from the others, exceptional in its gruesomeness like the sword that had made it. She followed its curve longways down his hip, her touch frigid. He was half-aware of the wind rushing overhead, hurrying backlit clouds along in its swift stream, clearing the sky. Moonlight flooded the alleyway. When Byleth looked up at him, her eyes gleamed with a cold, phosphorescent light. 

“My scar?”

His throat had gone dry; he softly cleared it. “You gave it to me, yes.”

“Yes,” she repeated. “The catacombs… Feels so long ago.”

“It was.”

To his horror, she leaned forward and kissed him there. His lower muscles tensed, panicking at the soft press of her lips against his bare skin. She had kissed the outside of his mask once, and that almost stopped his heart, but this was far worse. No one had ever kissed him save Emile’s mother and sisters on his round little cheeks— 

An unpleasant heat caught inside of him, a scathing denial of love. Not him. That wasn’t him, and the memory wasn’t his. He shuddered—something deep and distant gave a twinge, like glass cracking in silence.

Jeritza nudged her away. 

“Enough. Please.”

Byleth sat back on her heels, frowning. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” Shame darkened her face, dulled her vibrant eyes. He couldn't bear seeing her look that way. 

The Death Knight gestured her to him again. She was quick to obey, but when he took her by the hair she leaned into his touch. These things she probably never thought about were like acid to him, as if his armor was merely skin and her vile affections carrion insects worming into him, devouring him inside out.

He grunted, fisting both hands in her hair as he shoved his hips forward. Damn her making him so desperate to come, evaluating him with piercing eyes, her lips and cheeks drawn around his cock—so close, so close to pulling out and laying his release all over her pretty face. He would remove his helm and lick her clean himself, but that barrier would stay unbreached as long as he could help it. 

Such a pretty face. 

The Death Knight gagged her startled moan, inches down her throat. He held her in place, watching with vindictive delight as her eyes watered and her delicate brow creased in the middle. But she didn't fight him, she swallowed him—a tight, defiant swallow. Were he an utter weakling, he would have collapsed where he stood. She hugged his thighs, holding him captive while his will, his dignity shattered—and she accepted his come with a grateful whimper. He locked his knees, resisting the urge to melt while she stroked him from the hilt, taking everything until he was thoroughly spent.

As his head cleared, he realized he was whimpering himself. The Death Knight never made such pathetic sounds.  _ Never. _ Immediately, he choked it off and straightened his posture, furious for allowing himself such weakness before his rival. His beloved rival, who continued lapping at his oversensitive cock with her quick little tongue.

After a moment of further assault, he tugged on her hair. “Your greed is unbecoming.”

She met his neutral mask with a smirk. “Forgive my indelicacy.”

He rolled his eyes even though she could not see it.

“Hmm.” She touched her fingers to her lips. “You like sweets, don't you?”

He said nothing. They had never discussed such trivial things as likes and interests, and now was not the time to start. But he did. Quite a bit. 

He turned and adjusted himself, trying to ignore his burning cheeks while he buttoned his fly. His thoughts wandered in miserable directions—cream on her tongue, honey coating her lips, her lovely mouth twice as pleasing to him. As things were, he would never know how she tasted, but he couldn't deny his curiosity. 

And whose blasted curiosity was it? Who was to blame? Whose weakness had she wrenched from him now?

It didn't matter. He could forget it, cast it away with all of her tender looks and gestures, into the dark with feelings and memories he hadn’t need for. He offered her a hand up. 

"You have quarters here?"

An exasperated "of course I do" almost roared out of him. 

“Come later.” His reply was tight. Having her again so soon was an unexpected privilege, but he now understood that her pleasures came at a price. “I…owe you.”

“Really?” She laughed, pure savagery lurking beneath. “Then I look forward to it."

  
  


‡

  
  


“Wretch.”

“Reprobate?”

“You are what I call you.”

“What do you call me?” Byleth spread him wider, admiring her obscene handiwork. “I’d hear you much better if you’d get that pillow off your head.”

“No.”

She responded with an airy sigh, but he felt her serpentine eyes on him, memorizing him in this conquered state. Every punishment she had delivered him that night throbbed at once: bite marks on his thighs, welts laid over his battle scars, and his heavy, miserably neglected cock. 

His attempts to rile her had been futile, even his taunts and demands that she strike him harder because he could take it, whatever she gave him. But his tolerance for pain hadn’t impressed her and he couldn’t fathom why she would do these things to him other than, perhaps, she wanted him to fold, which he absolutely would not.

“Finish me before I mangle you with my bare hands!”

She bent over him, reaching around to stroke his inner thigh, no doubt feeling the indentations left by her teeth. 

"Tear you...apart…"

The slow draw of her phallus set his nerves on fire, and his body, in servile betrayal, accepted her. She filled him in one abrupt push and a fierce, droning pressure shot through him—unparalleled, so powerful that he yelped. She withdrew, alarmed.

“No!” His legs quivered as if he’d never trained a day in his life. “Again.”

Into him again—he gasped into the bed sheets. 

“There?” she asked, grinding her hips against his rear with cruel sobriety. The ringing in his ears smothered her voice; his raging heartbeat hacked away at her string of demands for him to speak and submit. “Use your words, now.” She slid out, stabbed into him. “You like what I’m doing to you? Tell me you want it.”

A knot in his chest sprung apart, some secret part of him unbound. He met her thrusts, desperate to free himself from this newfound bliss. And he used his words as she told him. Plenty of words—too many words. Who knew what spilled out. Cries, pleas, confessions. Violent ecstasy wracked his body, forcing his back into a painful arch while she continued driving the life from him. Her mercilessness, her sheer lack of hesitation, had him so painfully aroused he could have wept. How would he ever find another more fit to end his suffering? 

He finished in silence, throat stuffed with pleasure—and she held him there, drowning him in his horrific climax until his legs gave beneath him and he collapsed.

For a while, he forgot himself. Lost his mind in an ebbing wave of feeling. He was a nonentity, a receiver burrowed under a pillow, trapped with his own quick, ragged breaths. His body pulsed with warmth from her torment, twitching like a miserable dead thing. Never had he felt so small and wretched, nor had he considered it sublime to be so. 

“What have you done to me?”

Byleth pulled out of him and he moaned softly. Maybe she didn’t know, either. But he expected no less from her. Stripping him of armor, cutting his trousers open, bringing him to silent tears—tears!—and in it he found release. Humiliating release.

“I’m leaving a vulnerary. Use it.”

“Thank you.”

She left without another word. No monotone quip or double entendre. Not even a playful slap or passing caress.

When the door clicked shut behind her, he was struck by a sharp, almost frantic awareness of her absence. He unburied himself, casting aside the shredded pillow’s remains. A lone candle flickered on the nightstand, burned down to the end of its life. The room was small, but so heavily shadowed it seemed cavernous without her in it. 

He propped himself up on his elbows and raked his hair back from his face. What  _ had _ she done to him? What was he to make of it? The Death Knight was incapable of shame, yet his body flushed at the thought of being penetrated again. He longed for it—this time with her breasts flattened against his back and her lips following the groove of his spine. Plush against him, iron within him. Whoever he was.

Years they’d spent divided. The Death Knight, Jeritza, Emile—all shaken and panting in the cell of his mind, humiliated and reeling with euphoria, at an impasse. Years divided. Serving their purposes. It had to be that way. They couldn’t have or want the same things. It had to be that way.

The Death Knight brought a hand to the nape of his neck. The muscles there were like steel. It was useless to sink into his morass of personalities now. The weak ones would stay put, emboldened and hungry as they were, for on the eve of battle, they were all bound to the same fate, be it victory or death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next episode: Sex without full plated armor. Who even does that.


	4. homage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha haaa WHOOPS I totally got sidetracked planning for nanowrimo and fell way behind schedule on this thing. I might make a few edits laters but I’m gonna go ahead and update this bad boy now bc it’ll just sit here taunting me otherwise.
> 
> To the folks who subscribed: I see you. I am so damn slow and you’re wicked smart for doing that. ☜(≖‿≖ ☚ )

She embraced madness that night. Her tactician’s mind had snapped under the strain of a battle without logic, and all that remained was the certainty of death and the high that came with it. Wave after wave of enemies fell upon them. Men and women forfeited their lives in mad charges and predictable ambushes, all to delay and exhaust those sent to dispatch their prophet. Perhaps she understood their desperation to an extent; everything they knew and trusted would soon be destroyed. But it was their delusion that had infected her, their fanaticism that had driven the reason and mercy from this war.

After spearheading the Strike Force’s entry into the city, Byleth and the Death Knight fell back to assist the rearguard. Enemy reinforcements would come from the south and west, and it seemed wise to put distance between the other generals and their new acquisition. He had been straining at the end of his tether for far too long. 

He proved himself an invaluable—if volatile—weapon against the church’s forces, however, as his zeal for killing rivalled their devotion to Seiros. This being she called lover, who had held her and touched her cheek and begged her to torture him, was resplendent in carnage, dismantling enemies with as much loving precision as time and his massive scythe would allow. As the air thickened with smoke and the tang of fresh blood, memories of the true Battle of Garreg Mach, not the blurred rampage of her dreams, surfaced. Screams, parts, merciless laughter—this was the side of him she had forgotten. This was what she, at her most vulnerable, had become with him. 

If her students had seen her in such a gleeful blood-trance, she may have never gathered the courage to face them again. Not as their guide, nor their protector. 

Still, she couldn't think of that night without remembering their disastrous union, their souls intertwined in battle lust. It had awakened a beast in her, a starved animal that wanted to hurt and rage and ache, and he was there to beckon it, to feed its desires. He had given her something of herself to live for; if only she had better control of it. 

Now, surrounded by enemies in a battle that may have been her last, she could hardly focus for the sheer eroticism of his violence. Taking three, four men at once; his curved blade penetrating chests, spilling innards, splitting bodies in two; enemies crumpling at his feet, writhing for him in death as she had in pleasure.

But, the more impassioned he became, the wider it left him open, and Byleth wasn’t the only one to notice. 

A victorious moment had arrived for a church paladin. Their horse reared up; they spurred it into a full gallop. In resolute silence, they readied their lance, aligned it precisely to that one, tiny weak point in the Death Knight’s armor, which seemed to draw every eye in the ruined courtyard. They were the last of their company, ready to wield the sacrifices of their fallen allies as an instrument of justice—it was the very image of valor seeking to destroy evil, the stuff of history books. The Death Knight didn’t appear bothered when the paladin drove their weapon home, though the force of it almost lifted him out of his saddle. 

“General! Southeast is clear!”

Byleth snapped her wide gaze upward. Falcon knight. She couldn’t think of what to say, how to react to good news, she was so addled out of her mind. “Grab Linhardt, would you?” 

“Understood!”

Her vision bounced as she tore through the flame-ravaged streets of Fhirdiad. Through the rolling grey smoke, she saw the Death Knight holding the lance in his side, bringing his scythe about in a trembling yet powerful arc. The paladin’s head disappeared in a heavy whir of its blade. The scene was quite beautiful, gruesome as it was. Byleth thought of the violent paintings she had seen in the halls of nobles’ houses when she was young. 

“Ugh. Don’t look at that,” Jeralt had grumbled, herding her along with a gentle shove. “Warmongers.” 

The headless body slumped forward, catching the shaft of the lance as it fell. A faint, wet cracking sound carried through the din, and the Scythe of Sariel clattered against the pavestones, its wide blade singing with vibration. 

Before she could gather the breath to call out and stop him, the Death Knight adjusted his grip on the lance and ripped it out like a splinter. A gush of blood splattered the ground. His body followed.

Why the hell had he pulled the lance out? she thought. What a silly thing to do. But she wasn’t in her right mind, either. Fhirdiad was awash in fire and chaos, a living vision of hell. Some who had died on her sword looked like skewered rats and rabbits, others seemed to melt like candle wax. It could have been a dream, and for a second she thought she might wake up parched and sweating, but the Death Knight grasping her arm, the metal of their gauntlets grating together, was undeniably real.

“I can unmake your wound.”

She had already broken time twice; she had enough life in her to do it at least twice more—

He throttled her, almost crushing her wrist. That forbidding roughness coupled with the answering bolt of pain pulled her back from the brink of another divine pulse.

Despite her feelings for him, she had never pledged to protect him. No, their pact was quite different. Tonight, every living fiber in her body belonged to her students—their lives, their ambitions. Failing them now was inadmissible. He knew that. Perhaps he even respected it.

The Death Knight released her, his arm falling limp at his side. He lay there in post-Physic shock, paralyzed by excruciating pain he no longer acknowledged. His steel body was gouged and scarred, but his face was the same. Grinning. Burning eyes holding hers while his left side ran red. Byleth gazed down at him. He seemed at home in his nest of embers, his painted armor a mirror for the lashing fires which would soon engulf them.

She found it beautiful—him. He was magnificent. He was hers.

She placed her hand flat on his breastplate. He didn't move to resist—couldn't. "If you die, how can I punish you for being so careless?”

A spluttering cough burst out of him—then a wheezing breath, then a laugh. Byleth, barely focused enough to stanch his wound with magic, joined him in his pained laughter, tears evaporating from her eyes before she could shed them. If they somehow survived this night, she would reward him. For his strength; for his pain; for his stunning vulnerability.

When Linhardt found them, she was weeping.

  
  


‡

  
  


“You look bored.”

Said he, loitering by himself in the shadow of a support pillar. Byleth had been hurrying about as she often did on Saturdays, but stopped at the sound of Jeritza’s voice, both out of courtesy and shock that he had spoken to her first. The last time they had exchanged words was last month—the fourteenth—as surprising to her then as it was now.

She kept her distance, if only to avoid pulling a neck muscle looking up at him. “I always look bored.”

Jeritza didn’t move from his spot next to the pillar—he didn’t move at all, frozen like a startled deer. It seemed her brisk response had surprised him in turn. After a thoughtful moment, he replied. “I do as well…so I’m told.”

A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “Did you need help with something?”

“No.” His eyes shifted behind the painted slots of his mask. “I meant to ask if you would like to duel.”

“Duel?” Save some overzealous goal-setting among the students, no one had challenged her yet. The combat instructor would have as much reason as any, she supposed, but “duel” seemed a bit formal between colleagues. Did he realize how weird that sounded? “To the death?”

Jeritza gave her a blank look. “I only wanted to spar.”

“Yes, I was making a…” She trailed off, somewhat discouraged. Jeralt would have laughed and shaken his head, but Jeritza probably thought her snide or easily provoked. “Sorry, I’m busy today.” Her words came out flatter than she meant.

He inclined his head a touch before turning away and did not speak again. The entrance hall seemed to fall silent with him, as if everyone in their vicinity had been eavesdropping and were taking a moment to pity their failure at conversation. 

Byleth gave a quick bow, which he likely didn't notice, then resumed her endless loop of the monastery. 

As she crossed the threshold of the dim Reception Hall into the bright greenery of the courtyards, however, the pang of regret she felt moments ago struck again. Everything else on her mind seemed to collapse under the weight of their brief exchange. Let it go, she thought—but, damnit, she was never uncomfortable turning down Hanneman or Tomas when they wanted a wall to talk to, and she had even walked away from Alois mid-sentence without a lick of guilt. Jeritza had never shown interest in her as he did today. It didn’t sit right with her, and it never would, but she didn’t have the courage or words to repair it now. Nor the time, she reminded herself. She was busy; that wasn’t a lie. 

“Hey there, Professor.”

Sylvain walked his precarious line between endearing and irritating straight through her reverie. She granted him a nod. “Sylvain.” She hadn’t accepted his request to join her class and he seemed raring to make his case yet again—and she would give him a flat “no”, yet again. Based on their previous interactions, she felt his motivation boiled down to which he would rather stare at during lectures: Hanneman or her breasts. 

“Are you blushing?

Byleth halted, frowning. “Am I what?”

“Blushing. Your cheeks are kind of pink.” His grin widened at her deepening confusion. “It’s pretty adorable.”

She checked her forehead; it did feel warm. But she had been rushing up a steep flight of stairs moments ago. “I was running.”

“Huh. Well, you could _stop_ running for a sec and let me to invite you to tea this afternoon—”

“No, thank you.”

“Aw, come on.” 

“I’m busy today.” Her voice came out flat again. Rather than conceding as Jeritza had, Sylvain pouted and began a more focused appeal, this time to her “ragged” appearance and obvious tension. He wasn’t wrong. Had Jeritza noticed as well? Had he, in his strange manner, made an effort to speak with her out of concern? The idea of him committing this random act of kindness had her feeling sort of feverish—Byleth shook her head clear. “Perhaps another time, if you behave.”

He rubbed his chin, humming in dissatisfaction. “You said that last time.”

“Did I?”

“I’m starting to think you find me too attractive.” Byleth mustered an incredulous expression for that one, which Sylvain answered with a shrug. “Denying your feelings is bad for your health, Professor.”

Though spoken in jest, his words prodded at her lingering regret. Or was it worry? What could any of this have to do with her feelings? “What feelings?”

Sylvain gave a wounded groan, folding his arms. “So cold…”

Byleth took off with a distracted farewell, her pulse racing. 

_What feelings?_

  
  


‡

  
  


A gentle creak opened Byleth's eyes. 

A soft light from the doorway kept them open.

She stared in half-sleeping curiosity, following the beam of powdered gold light across the floor. It disappeared as slowly, crowded out by a shadow figure—a large one she knew well, and hadn't expected to darken her room. If it was her room. It didn’t feel like her room.

The perfect quiet broke with a clack. A pause, then a faint muttering. Silence. 

After a longer pause, the sound came again, joined by clicking steel buckles and straining leather. 

How long had she been asleep? The last thing she remembered with any clarity was clinging to Edelgard, whispering, “is my heart beating?”

“It is, my teacher,” she had said. Her pale eyes gleamed with tears as she smiled. And it was beating, pounding, broken wide open. And she wasn’t sure why, but she laughed and cried with her, then fell into another bottomless sleep.

A firm chest pressed against her back, followed by an arm curling round her waist—long, well-muscled. He needed muscle to carry however many tens of pounds of steel the Death Knight wore. She smiled to herself, too listless to do much else. How small she was next to him. That had always stirred her interest—inching nearer and nearer to the masked man, trying to measure his full height until he got fed up with her following him and left.

Byleth would have tipped back asleep then, but the rest of her rare bedmate had slipped between the sheets behind her. He wrapped a leg around hers, hooking a heel at her ankle, and pushed his naked erection against her ass. If he wanted, he could lift her knee and slide his cock in. Anywhere he wanted, if he wanted. She would let him. She squeezed her thighs together, feeling her own wetness and pulse, hoping that was what he had come to do.

His name waited on her tongue, but her lips wouldn't move. She still wasn't quite sure what to call him, and it had been a long, long while since she'd seen his face. It was unlikely she would see him at all while they shared a bed in the dark. But names didn’t matter now; having his hands on her was enough to rouse her body from sleep, though her mind remained clouded and sluggish. 

She reached up behind her and stroked his hair—she remembered the color of it well, and the length—it was disordered and tangled, not as luscious and silky as his sister’s had been. Turning at the waist, she took a handful and tugged him down.

He grunted when her mouth found his. His tongue carefully swiped hers before he pulled away. Who could say when he had last kissed someone this way, if he had ever. He was anxious in his movements, hands uncertain as he pawed at her hips, prompting her to face him.

Byleth raised her hand between them and cupped his unshaven cheek. "That was too forward, wasn’t it."

"No, I… I just—" He stopped to swallow. "I wanted…" This nervous voice didn't sound like Jeritza, either.

"It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

Their lips touched for a moment; it seemed too much, and again he drew back. This time he kissed her neck, hid his face in her hair. All the while his hands stole across her skin, featherlight strokes interrupted by curious, hungry groping at her breasts and hips. Her body tightened, jumped, and he seemed fascinated by it. How she wanted to touch him the same, but he flinched away whenever she did. The Death Knight had never handled her this way—he seized her, took her, and she did the same to him.

Dizzy with fatigue and desire, she placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him onto his back. Dear as he was, this man’s shyness was torture. 

The bed sheets whispered beneath her hands and knees as she mounted him with cat-like grace. When he tried to protest, she silenced him with a biting kiss. Whimper. Moan. He gave in—he gave her power. It made her body so tight, insides twisting with want for this secret lover who had been kept from her. The Death Knight made her this way—conditioned this seething perversity—and whether or not he realized that, the poor thing would suffer for it. She would take pleasure in his suffering, too, just as she had with his counterpart. 

Byleth rocked back on her knees, felt the weight and heat of his cock against her thigh. It felt different without the accompanying stab of cold metal—it would hit her insides different. Her pulse kicked, head full of sighs and trembling climaxes. She ran herself slick along the length, its slight curve, base to tip. 

He responded with a slow thrust of his hips, growling deep in his chest. With or without the metallic resonance, his voice was unmistakable.

“Hello. Can’t you wait your turn?" she murmured, her voice as languid as her body. "Shame on you.”

The Death Knight gave a low, dark chuckle, so much like his dying laughter. As the night of their last battle came back to her, so did the pain of leaving his side and the glaring loneliness which had haunted her after. While she didn’t want to encourage his suppression of the other man, her heart seemed to overflow with relief at his presence. It could have been another half-decade apart for the two of them, or a lifetime. But he had survived. And so had she.

His body was hard and abraded by years of relentless combat, but there were soft places—his thighs, the sides of his long torso, the underside of his arms. She wanted to feel him not only with her hands, but with her mouth, her tongue. She placed a tight kiss against his ribs, then sunk her teeth into him. His abdomen flexed beneath her palm as he drew in a sharp breath. 

"You were injured here?"

"Further up."

She was careful planting her knee between his legs, letting his cock and balls rest against her thigh. If only she could tie them up; the last time she played with him was before Fhirdiad, however long ago that had been. How sweetly he broke—his beautiful moans and cries coming undammed while she fucked him. She would kill and die to hear them again.

He plunged his hands into her hair and guided her head down to his side. She put her lips to the healed wound, followed the wide scar with the tip of her tongue; his skin tasted like sweat and smelled faintly of camphor salve. To think this tender flesh of his had been torn, his ribs prised open. 

"You should have given that wound to me," he snarled, "not some half-wit with a polearm.”

Her heart began to pound, a feeling as new and jarring as the avarice raging within it. She found his throat, squeezed. “I can fuck you within an inch of your life. Will that do?”

He responded with another foul chuckle, arching into her grip. “Nicely.”

All she needed to do was shift her leg over his hip, guide him inside. 

She had only touched his navel, delighting in trailing her fingertips through the wiry hair below it, when he suddenly groaned and snatched up her wrist. "No."

Byleth flushed. "Have I done something wrong?"

“No,” he repeated, softer. “Nothing wrong.” The ache in his voice had a tinge of humility, a hint that the Death Knight had left.

His hand moved to her shoulder and nudged her off him. For now, she would lie in obedience while he straddled her thighs, this nervous man mimicking her, struggling to speak, to touch her.

“Who are you?”

She flinched when he tore the bed sheet away, shuddering at the chill—were they still north? Both his hands moved to her chest. This time she shuddered from the warmth; bare hands, not gloves; a stranger holding her breasts together, lifting them, letting them fall soft and pliant in his callused palms. As quick as the Death Knight had appeared, so did the man's boldness. He followed the curves with his tongue, then his teeth, tasting her body as she had his. What she wouldn’t give to see him now, hair draped over his eyes and the sides of her chest—slavering over her like a wolf, though he did so with reverence. 

Byleth growled her impatience, yanking him up by his hair and meeting his extended tongue with hers. His aggression stirred again, shoulder and back muscles hardening to stone. She kissed his soft lower lip before delving in further, pulling harder. He turned away from her kiss with a gratifying wet sound.

"Must I tie you up?" It was Jeritza’s voice now; even and perpetually bored.

"If you like."

She pictured a wry smile on his lips. "Another time…now, behave.”

There were many things he couldn't do with claw-tipped gauntlets and his cock—torturing her sensitive breasts with licks and bites; cupping his palm around her cunt; sliding two fingers inside. She squirmed back into the downy mattress, lifting her hips to meet his hand, offering her chest to his mouth. He dragged the flat of his tongue over her nipples, sucked one red before moving to the other, taking care with his teeth, sending fitful jolts of pleasure between her thighs. Either he was more experienced than she thought, or he was approaching sex as he would a sparring match: experimenting, looking for the strongest reaction to find the weak point. Perhaps it was both.

She clutched at his tight bicep, whimpering, curling away from his hot mouth, toward his body. It seemed to give him pause, her desire for closeness; he stopped fingering her for a moment and gathered her into a sweaty half-embrace. 

He smelled of leather the most, which comforted her the way clean linen or flowers would most people. Leather evoked combat, a life of simplicity, enemy or ally. But there was a fainter scent beneath it, sweet and earthy, that, in an instant, filled her with despair. She leaned her forehead against his bare chest. It was the smell of captivity—living trapped inside of the Death Knight, buried in gore and soil—and it was unmistakably his.

This time he let her kiss him.

If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to keep from crying. Her eyes were already watering, tears and moans beckoned by the droning pressure of his fingers, now three deep, stroking her like a precious silk.

“Jeritza?”

“Hm?”

“Have I been cruel to you?”

He sighed against her hair. “No.”

“I feel like I’ve only ignored you.”

“You haven’t.”

“It isn’t just him. Everything I said and wrote, I—”

“You could not possibly have done more for me than you already have.” He sounded annoyed, but tightened his arm around her. “Now let me show you affection before I become sick with it.”

“You want me to come for you?”

His face was hot against her neck. “Yes.”

“This way…there’s a trick to it.”

“Tell me.”

“Consistency.” She took a steadying breath as he resumed his slow, appraising in and out. “When you find something that works, you stick with it.”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously. But in our case right now, you need to be, um…” She reached down and took his wrist, guiding the heel of his palm to press against her clit. “Consistent…here…too.”

“Oh.” His bemusement was almost funny. But he sped up for her, jerked thick little gasps out of her. By no means was he experienced, but he read her like a duelist, attuned to her breathing, her deathgrip on his arm, the perishing tension in her muscles and voice. 

“I’m going to come,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

“Oh?”

“Don’t stop—”

Jeritza followed the sharp toss of her hips, the corded muscle of his forearms unbreakable, unbruisable. With a delirious whine, Byleth nuzzled at the hollow of his shoulder, licking at his skin, smiling like a fool. 

He stayed buried to his knuckles while she pulsed around him, absorbed in curiosity.

“Have you done this before?”

No reply. She sighed when he withdrew. Once again, her thoughts gravitated back to the dilemma of him: still frustrated, still untouched by her. 

Before she could move or suggest anything, Jeritza said, "open." She obeyed, shyly licking at his fingertips. "How do you taste?"

The question left her momentarily speechless. It was nice that her finishing had revived his confidence, but she wasn’t of a mind to speculate what was going through his head right now. She decided it would be better to answer him, though, than spend however long explaining why that was a bizarre thing to ask. "Kind of salty."

“Hmm.” 

He left her side and, to her immediate dismay, knelt between her splayed legs. Byleth’s knees fell together, blocking him. She hadn’t finished _spasming,_ damn him.

“Don’t!”

“What?”

Byleth began to stammer, but he didn’t wait for a proper answer. Jeritza smoothly parted her thighs and buried his face between them.

Another stab of pleasure made her gasp when he lapped into her. What she wouldn’t have given to see him doing this, to hold his heavy-lidded gaze while he licked her out. Her hips quivered, her nerves suffering for him. Why he kissed her there better than he did her mouth, she didn’t know. Bold, deep, greedy, as if she were a vice he hadn’t indulged in years. She had tasted other women before—they weren’t sweet like teacakes or candies, but the sounds they made—

“Aaah!”

He leaned against her thigh, licking gently at her clit—as if he owned it. “You did it again.”

She tilted her hips away from him to avoid another wet slip of his tongue. If she told him why, he would no doubt take advantage of her weakness and drive her crazy. Byleth bit her lips shut as if to hold that secret knowledge in.

Jeritza grumbled to himself, leaving the space between her legs. She heard him wipe saliva from his mouth. As far as she could tell—the darkness was so dense—he was sitting back on his heels now, deliberating. It wasn’t quite the same as the Death Knight’s habit of giving ground to his opponents in order to toy with them, but the same undercurrent of hunger was there. He wasn’t done with her. Nowhere near it.

Without warning, he grabbed her ankles and hoisted her legs over his shoulders, raising her hips to his mouth as if she weighed nothing. His tongue flattened, moving flush against her. 

“Oh, no—” Her entire body was an exposed nerve—she wanted to buck and squirm but couldn’t match his strength. She covered her moans, straining her lungs to be still, to be silent, to keep the cries building in her chest from bursting forth. His tongue slipped too far, too low, almost to her rear; a muffled squeal escaped through her fingers. 

Jeritza stopped. “Why are you doing that?” He was breathing heavier than before. “Uncover your mouth.”

Byleth did, grateful for the reprieve. “I don’t…” She swallowed, trying to catch her breath. It was almost impossible in her upended position. “Someone'll hear…”

He gave an uncharacteristic snort of laughter before pressing his mouth to her again.

“Please!”

He answered her plea as he chose—he slid one hand down from her hip, found and squeezed her breast. It was coming again, another unbearable rush of pressure. Her body braced itself, muscles wringing her bones so tight she feared they would break. 

He pinched and twisted her nipple, filled her with his tongue, and she came again with a fevered sob.

Byleth gathered fistfuls of his hair, moving her hips in pathetic little thrusts, half in reflex, half hoping that he would drop her. In defiance, he obliged her with another, deeper kiss. Her mind and body began to break under his hellish stimulation. If he wished, he had the strength to hold her still, lap her straight into another climax. And he would; the Death Knight would, Jeritza would! She wanted to laugh at herself, how stupid she was. _Had he done this before_ —he was only doing to her what she had done to him. She had been so fixated on getting inside of the Death Knight it never occurred to her that Jeritza, and the parts of him she had never met, nor expected to meet, could be quietly present rather than locked away, learning everything about her, knowing her better than she could know him. Brilliant, brilliant.

“Give me your cock—I’ll be as loud as you want.”

Jeritza froze, tongue out, then unhooked her legs from his shoulders and, without ceremony, let her ass drop to the bed. In an instant, his body covered hers, hands forcing her knees up to her chest. Byleth reached between them, her arms like lead, found with one hand her slickened clit, found him hard with the other, stroked him to his sleek, wet tip, then guided him in.

She wasn't used to her unbound heart, feeling it pound with life. And he was giving it to her, everything she had been missing, as heavy and quick as her own pulse. Whoever was with her at any given time didn’t matter; if not for him, she never would have known the things that lay trapped inside of her, never known the near-ecstasy of freeing them.

When her body seized again and her cries peaked, he clapped a hand over her mouth, bent down close to her. Her knees were hooked over his elbows, her hip joints searing, muscles stretched to breaking.

“Scream for me.”

He then bit into her neck; and scream she did.

Had there been light and a room to look at, it would have been hazy, glimmering through the tearful slits of her eyes, but she was blind. Blind, going slack. Jeritza pulled out of her abruptly, his breathing raw like hers. He released her from his rough hold, let her unfold beneath him. Save the bed and his waist between her thighs, it reminded her of lying prone in the darkness, destroyed but alive.

"Did you…?"

"No. This is enough." Byleth leaned up on an elbow, her muscles quivering, but he kissed her quiet, backed her down to the pillow. "Please…you’ve done enough for me."

His low voice paired well with her slowing heartbeat. Her thoughts had become mud, the words in her mouth slipping back into the nothingness they came from. She wanted more of him, closer than the Death Knight could ever manage, but she was already wading in the shallows of another long sleep.

  
  


‡

  
  


_I would like to begin with an apology, for I never responded to your last letter._

_I suppose I never responded to any of your letters, though I recall writing them. The Death Knight has a nasty habit of disposing of things while I am otherwise occupied. Well, he is now occupied himself, slumbering away as he does after most battles, while I am unable to sleep and therefore bored out of my skull. But I digress…_

_Your letter came to me two weeks ago today, actually, just before I traveled north for Fhirdiad. I, or rather he, read it in a wretchedly small tent by candlelight, deep in the woods, surrounded by ear-splitting wolf-howls. (It was a terribly filthy read, by the way. Even for you.) But despite the confinement, despite the damned wolves, it helped me sleep that night. It is rare that I sleep long enough to dream, yet dream I did. Vividly, of you. Perhaps I owe it to your remarkable ability to get under my skin._

_I will spare you the details of what took place—and I expect you will moan about that, but I promise you will find out as soon as you pull out of that infernal sleep of yours. Unlike the Death Knight, who makes threats he is forbidden to keep, I am true to my word. Again, I digress._

_The dream. We had a brief conversation, just you and I. It has been so long since I last heard your voice that it carries an odd timbre when I dream of you, but it pleases me to hear it and see you without him between us. You said you had died before, hundreds of times, but you would not explain how. I asked if you had died for me, and you smiled that way you do sometimes. I cannot describe it well, forgive me, but it makes me feel like strangling someone. You would not answer me that, either. Yet I believed you._

_Upon waking, I was in a panic. I thought, am I no better than those lunatics who worship you as the reincarnated Goddess? Am I now an unquestioning follower of a so-called prophet? But I realized this was not a matter of faith. Faith cannot be proved, as you well know._

_Here, I reveal to you a certain ability of my own. You are doubtless aware of this, being his opponent nonpareils, but the Death Knight is much like you in his tactical thinking. I would call it primitive in comparison, as he measures his victories in corpses, but he reads battles with such precision I often find us leaps ahead of our enemies. (Now I am sure you are wondering why, if this is the case, he acted with such poor judgment in Fhirdiad. I will get to that.)_

_My intent here is not to brag, but to point out the difference in our capabilities. I can admit to my losses. Many able fighters have died under my command and, in these past five years, I have taken more injuries than I suppose I should have. The errors I make are irreversible; yours, it seems, are not. Somehow, your strategies account for every contingency, not one detail missed, and I wonder, how many thousands of battles did it take to achieve such omnipotence? You aren’t immortal, I know that much, so there must be another reason._

_You ought to know that I have always thought you extraordinary—and before you take that as flattery, you also ought to know that I hated you for it—but the idea that you, a career mercenary, could manipulate the flow of time is absurd. Though it has crossed the Death Knight’s mind before. There were suspicious things you did that only a staggering fool would have missed. Your immediate presence wherever he appeared, your haggard appearance despite reports that you had fought very few enemies to reach him, your uncanny predictions of his attacks. If you wanted a victory, you seized it. That night I found you in the fires of Garreg Mach, you had already surrendered. I thus concluded that when you are in control of yourself, you can control fate._

_I took notice of your allies at Arianrhod. Exhausted, but alive and intact, whereas you were in bloody tatters, could hardly stand, all but died in my arms when you climaxed. Might I briefly indulge in that memory? How breathtakingly dead you looked… More convincing in your little performance than a Mittelfrank prima donna. And how could one acquire such natural grace if not through experience?_

_Thus, Fhirdiad was my final experiment. I entered that battle at your side, not only prepared, but determined to suffer a grave injury in hopes that you would at least admit to having such abilities, which you did when you told me you could, not heal, but “unmake” my wound. And as it was in my dream, I believed you. Why then? Why, with my absence of faith, did I choose to accept this claim as truth? Reason, oddly enough. You possess this unnatural power, yet use it to destroy the falsehoods which created it. The artifices of church and nobility are twisted imitations of nature and by ripping them apart, well, that makes you as real and innate to the world as the change of seasons or death itself._

_As I lay here convalescing, I think of how close you came to using that power for me, even in the midst of that momentous battle, even with those students you love so well in worse danger than I._

_It is strange that you would consider someone like me worth saving. You are aware of my sins. The unforgivable crimes I commit, the pleasures they bring me…they are as much mine as they are the Death Knight’s. Each drop of blood we spill is another step away from humanity. And yet, as we descend further into sickness, I come closer to understanding why we have taken this path. One day I might find the words to explain to you why I have yearned for your blade and why I do not deserve the ending I so desire. Perhaps then, if you are still near me, I might even understand why I am unrelentingly drawn to you. For now, I can at least say this: until I met you, I never thought I could kill or die with honor._

_The Death Knight may very well find this letter when he awakens. It is my hope that you find it first._

_\- Jeritza_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time! Thales is dead. And that’s _hot._


End file.
